What's your workout? | By Jen Murphy
Stephen Stoute lost nearly 100 pound by boxing (Photos: Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal)
The Executive
STEPHEN STOUTE, chief executive of Carol's Daughter beauty and skin-care line
Age: 39
Height: 6 feet
Weight: 225 pounds
"If someone says you can lose 20 pounds in the course of a year by punching a bag then I'm signing up," says Stephen Stoute. "There's a Rocky in all of us." Mr. Stoute, former executive vice president of Interscope Geffen A&M Records, did just that -- except he dropped nearly 100 pounds over the course of nine years.
Mr. Stoute was in top shape in his teens and early 20s, playing football in both high school and college. "Once I got into the professional world, health was not at the forefront of things on my mind," he says. The pounds slowly started to creep on, and by age 30 he weighed 315 pounds.
"I was avoiding mirrors and ignoring it," he says. But when he turned 30 he realized he couldn't turn a blind eye to his weight anymore: "I knew it would end badly."
Mr. Stoute started boxing sporadically and lost 50 pounds in about five years. After that, he hit a plateau. So two years ago, he decided to step it up a notch by doing high-intensity boxing four to five times a week, losing another 40 pounds. In May, he hit 225 pounds on the scale. "In the past I felt like my body always just wanted to be fat," he says, "but now I feel like I'm at a healthy weight that I can stay at without any crash diet."
Mr. Stoute lives and works in New York City. He has a 4-year-old daughter.
The Workout
Mr. Stoute works out at Aerospace, a boxing-focused fitness studio in Manhattan. He usually takes a 60-minute group class on Wednesdays and Saturdays that incorporates speed bags, heavy bags and double-end bags, which look like speed bags fastened to the floor and celing by a cord and are designed to increase speed and decrease reaction time. Mr. Stoute and his classmates don hand wraps and boxing gloves and rotate around a room practicing jabs, hooks, uppercuts and kicks. "You can be a great boxer or a novice, but everyone leaves with the same look on their face: whoa," he says.
Three days a week, Mr. Stoute will also do hourlong, one-on-one training sessions with Michael Olajide Jr., a former top-ranked middleweight boxer who co-founded the gym. "Those individual sessions are really educational," he says. "You really learn how to throw proper blocks and punches. And while you're learning, you put in a lot of sweat."
In a typical session, Mr. Stoute practices all of the basic punches: jabs, hooks, upper cuts and crosses. He will then do sequences, sometimes putting 60 consecutive moves together. The two men will often go into the ring and spar. Mr. Stoute says he's noticed more definition in his arms and torso from the workouts, and that it's also improved his eye-hand coordination.
After each boxing session, Mr. Stoute will spend 15 minutes doing pull-ups, sit-ups and push-ups, and will stretch.
The Routine
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday: 60-minute private boxing session, followed by 15 minutes of stetching, pull-ups, push-ups and crunches
Wednesday and Saturday: 60-minute private boxing session and a 60-minute group boxing class
Friday and Sunday: Off
The Diet
As Mr. Stoute started losing weight due to exercise, he started making healthier food choices. "People start saying, 'You've lost weight -- you look so good.' After that you don't want to be caught eating a cheeseburger," he says.
Mr. Stoute will eat one bowl of Special K cereal topped with blueberries, strawberries or bananas for breakfast. He used to take his cereal with whole milk, but now uses skim. For lunch he will often order sashimi or a salad with tuna fish, hot peppers, tomatoes and onions. Mr. Stoute goes out for work dinners about four evenings a week, and will try to order a healthier entree such as chicken or fish. If he gets steak, he'll eat a smaller portion. He also always orders a vegetable with his main course.
Football season is Mr. Stoute's Achilles' heel when it comes to eating healthy, and he lets Sundays be his "cheat day." "All of a sudden there is beer and carbs," he says. "But if I do it one day a week and in moderation, then I don't feel guilty."
Cost and Gear
Mr. Stoute's gym membership costs $150 a month, and each one-on-one training session costs $200. He spent about $100 on his boxing gloves. When he isn't in the ring he wears Nike Shox running shoes; in the ring he wears a pair of Adidas Y-3 high-top sneakers. "There are pretty stylish people there so I pay attention to what I wear," Mr. Stoute says.
Fitness Tip
Mr. Stoute's secret to staying fit: drink water. "I don't think most people realize the huge role that drinking water plays in weight loss," he says. "Drink it throughout the day. Drink it instead of juice, soda, sports drinks, which all just add calories."
Quick Fix
When Mr. Stoute is traveling, he will use the gym at his hotel and do 45 minutes of cardio on the elliptical or treadmill, or a combination of the two. If he has just five minutes, Mr. Stoute grabs a jump rope for a super quick, calorie-burning cardio session.
The Playlist
Mr. Stoute says he gets revved up to any song from his days in the record industry. "Any rap records from the early- to mid-'90s puts me in a very youthful mood," he says, "Jay-Z, the Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, Nas -- anything from that era makes me feel 26 years old again."
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